Guide S35 -- Management Guide to Custodianship
Information is one of the most important resources the ministry
has. There is a significant cost to gathering and maintaining
information, and the ministry cannot operate without it. Increasingly,
information is being combined or updated by staff from many different
areas, using different applications. Information from one program
area is often relevant to many other program areas, and information
from different program areas can and should be combined or integrated
to be of maximum use. The integrity of this information is threatened
unless proper care is taken. For these reasons, each discrete
information subject (e.g. "Opening"; "Employee";
"Asset") and each application (e.g. "Timber Tenure
Administration"; "Client Management") that is the
responsibility of the ministry is assigned a single Custodian. The Custodian
is responsible and accountable for managing corporate
information or a corporate application as a vital resource on
behalf of the ministry.
The integrity and sharing of information across the ministry,
and the exploiting of information to the ministry's advantage
via applications are the key focuses of the Custodian. Custodians
provide leadership, and treat their scope of responsibility as
the entire ministry, not only their own organizational area.
A Custodian enables cooperation, appropriate allocation of resources,
and partnership throughout the ministry, and is accountable for
determining the business information required by the ministry.
This may involve influencing other program areas to convince
them that proposed definitions and/or policies will meet the ministry's
goals, and ensuring that conflicts between ministry business needs
are successfully resolved.
Data Custodianship involves two main areas of responsibility:
- Information management: establishing what business information
is of interest to the ministry within the custodian's program
area, and establishing definitions, policy, and rules for that
information; and,
- Information sharing: ensuring the information is available
to the widest possible audience so that the ministry gains maximum
value out of the investment made in that information.
Application Custodianship involves two main areas of responsibility:
- Application development: sponsoring projects to develop
information systems that enable staff to meet business needs,
including the provision of training on those systems; and,
- Application management: periodically enhancing applications
where necessary, managing the change process where an application
enhancement affects other ministry program areas, and providing
application support to ensure the ministry's business needs are being met.
In the past, applications were developed on a departmental basis,
but the increasing use of shared database technology has changed
the nature of these systems. Today, ministry information is quickly
becoming more and more integrated across all systems platforms.
Because of this increased sharing, ways must be found to encourage
the joint funding or sponsorship of information management across
departmental, application, and program area boundaries.
A Data Custodian's responsibilities pertain to the creation
and use of data for the purpose of enabling decision-making and
providing information. At a detailed level the Data Custodian is concerned
with information structures called entities and
databases (see Definitions). These structures usually
require some maintenance, improvements or enhancements, and updates
over time.
Detailed Responsibilities (Data Custodian)
Data Custodians are responsible for the structure and content
of information the ministry needs to conduct its business, within
the context of the Data Custodian's business area. The Data Custodian's
obligations include:
- Information management:
- determining the business information required by the ministry:
deciding what information is important for the ministry
to record, and validating that the ministry's business interests
are served by the investment in that information.
- ensuring that core information requirements for all ministry
interests are addressed: consulting with any program areas and
Operations Division representatives that have a business interest
in the information being collected.
- establishing policies, procedures, definitions, standards, and
guidelines: ensuring that definitions for ministry information
structures (entities, attributes, and spatial
data structures; see Definitions) are complete, correct,
and understandable, from a ministry-wide perspective.
- making decisions about public access, creation of records, and
fee estimates as per the requirements of the Freedom of Information
and Protection of Privacy Act.
- taking steps to continually improve the integrity, accuracy,
precision, timeliness, consistency, standardization, and value
of information.
- defining codes and edit rules to ensure completeness and integrity
of ministry information.
- deciding on appropriate levels of access to business information,
providing authorization for security access rights and privileges
to information for designated individuals or groups, and deciding
on investigative and corrective controls to prevent the addition
of unauthorized or inaccurate information to databases.
- providing appropriate training to staff and others to ensure
data is captured accurately and completely.
- ensuring recovery of information by authorizing information retention rules, physical security programs,
information disposal plans, and disaster and other recovery plans.
- checking to ensure retention rules and other recovery plans are met.
- acting upon requests for changes to ministry information requirements from other program areas, and
soliciting cooperation from different program areas in realizing changes to ministry information requirements.
- providing resources for the building of bridges or links to ensure access to common ministry information on
different computer systems, where necessary. For example, there should be a single primary source for information,
however, when additional related information resides on technology different from that of the primary source, then
conversion, alteration, or transfer of existing information may be necessary. Two-way bridges may be required for loading,
maintaining, and using common ministry data.
- Information sharing:
- ensuring the ministry obtains maximum value out of the investment in information by making the information known
and available to the widest possible audience: information should be collected with the intent that it will be shared
with any other program areas that may gain benefit out of its use.
- marketing the decisions made about what the supported ministry information requirements will be: when decisions are
made about what data will be collected, other program areas will need to know about those decisions and understand
the reasons for them.
- influencing other program areas where necessary to convince those involved that the definitions and policies will
meet the ministry's goals.
- functioning as negotiator and arbitrator to achieve the best compromise in preventing or resolving conflicts in information
use, interpretation, or meaning.
- knowing how their information is affected by other business areas (conversely, knowing how others are affected
by their information).
An Application Custodian's responsibilities pertain to the building
of automated applications for the purpose of processing routine
transactions, and enabling information retrieval and the resultant
decision-making by ministry staff. Applications often access
information from many different subject areas, and at a programming
level access data from databases. It is essential for
application custodians to work with any custodians who control
information in databases to which their application requires access.
Detailed Responsibilities
Application Custodians are responsible for ensuring that, within
the scope of their application boundaries, the ministry's processing
requirements are met through the accepted practice of multiple
releases of an application over time. The Custodian's obligations
include:
- Application development:
- determining the business information and application requirements
that will be supported; providing leadership and including in
any discussions staff from areas of the ministry most affected
(e.g., policy or business rule experts, Operations Division representatives,
etc.).
- determining the relative priorities of business information requirements
that are to be provided in each new application release (i.e.
determining the scope of the project).
- sponsoring projects to ensure the business needs of the ministry
are satisfied, through applications that are developed from a
corporate perspective.
- coordinating implementation of the new application, including
development of material for courses and providing initial training.
- Application management:
- accepting complete responsibility for any change process that
affects the information resources of the ministry (i.e. affecting
any program area's information definitions, and/or any
program area's applications).
- using scheduled releases to implement enhancements to applications.
- providing ongoing application training for new users and making
periodic refresher training available.
- providing support to application users, assisting them in properly
using the application within the context of their business functions.
This includes investigation of application problems as well as
providing assistance to users to show how the application can
be used to support the business functions that staff are performing.
- providing solutions to problems of a business nature that may
arise. When an application release is implemented, there can
be major effects on the business and on staff who use the applications.
These effects often reach beyond the scope of the actual systems
development project. For example, the development of application
releases that enforce business rules must be timed properly so
the releases coincide with changes to ministry policy or the Forest
Act. The Custodian must deal with the issues that arise, and
coordinate efforts to ensure the right decisions are made and
appropriate action is taken.
- negotiating or arbitrating to achieve the best compromise where
there are conflicting interests.
A sub-class of the Data Custodian is a Steward, who at the request
of and on behalf of a Data Custodian, can ensure that a set of the Data
Custodian's information is available, if that Data Custodian does not
have the appropriate operational resources available to provide
the necessary functions. The Steward chosen will likely be a
Data Custodian for other program information (since by definition the
Steward must have access to operational resources).
The Data Custodian remains fully responsible for the information with
respect to the business, but can delegate technical or operational
portions that may be better dealt with by other experts. In other
words, the Data Custodian is responsible for specifying what
information is recorded but might delegate the decision of how
it is stored and retrieved to a Steward. The Data Custodian specifies
the business use of the information including structure, format,
content, and how the information relates to other business information.
The Steward might then ensure that, for a particular operational
platform, the integrity of the information meets the published
standards. The Steward will have only limited responsibility
for information content.
Detailed Responsibilities
The scope of each Steward's responsibilities depends on the particular
arrangements made between the Steward and Data Custodian, however,
Steward responsibilities will always be a subset of Data Custodian
responsibilities. The primary purpose and responsibility of a
Steward is:
- to provide adequate resources to sustain the essential quality of the information in question; to manage
the information in its physical environment and ensure that its integrity is intact relative to its business meaning,
as specified by the Data Custodian.
The following list contains suggestions where identifying a Steward may assist custodians in managing their
information resources. A Steward might assume some or all of the following obligations, depending on the needs,
resources, and decisions of the Data Custodian:
- providing access to corporate information identified by the Data Custodian and based on access authorization
developed by the Data Custodian. No responsibility for the capture, content, or accuracy of the information is assumed.
- authorizing physical security, disaster recovery plans and procedures,
retention plans, and disposal plans for information,
to ensure physical recovery of information in disaster situations.
- providing resources for the building of links to ensure access to common ministry information on different computer systems, where necessary. For example, there should be a single primary source for information; when additional related information resides on technology different from that of the primary source, then information conversion, information transfer, or alteration of existing information may be necessary. Two-way links may be required for loading, maintaining, and using common ministry data, however where possible should be avoided.
- notifying the Data Custodian when requests for changes to ministry information requirements are made. Assisting the Data
Custodian by soliciting cooperation from different program areas in realizing changes to ministry information requirements.
The following table may help to describe the differing levels
of responsibility between the Data Custodian and the Steward.
| Data Custodian |
Steward |
| Defines data requirements to a standard specific level
(information content) - retains responsibility for what
business data is recorded. |
Processes data into the physical platform and manages the
data thereafter from a technical perspective - might be
responsible for how data is recorded. |
| Defines and publishes business specifications for spatial data requirements. |
Ensures the data entering the physical platform meets the published standards in terms of
format (representational and positional), and limited content. |
| Defines and publishes business specifications for spatial data requirements. |
Assists in defining physical specifications for spatial data requirements where technical expertise
is scarce and the Data Custodian does not have access to such expertise (e.g. where spatial/GIS data
management is pushing the boundaries of available technology). |
The Principal Data Areas list shows the Data Custodians in the
ministry, and lists the major data holdings they are each responsible for.
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Last modified November 19, 1997